{"id":48208,"date":"2019-05-04T05:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-05-04T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=48208"},"modified":"2019-05-03T19:30:34","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T23:30:34","slug":"justin-trudeaus-french-language-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/05\/04\/justin-trudeaus-french-language-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Trudeau’s (French) language problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colby Cosh<\/a> reports on a recent academic paper that sticks the boots into the little potato and his, um, problematical French language issues:<\/p>\n

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Thursday’s hot-off-the-press Post<\/em> contained a short summary (by CP’s Giuseppe Valiante) of a recent academic paper about how Justin Trudeau’s handling of spoken French is regarded in Quebec. In case you didn’t read Valiante’s summary, I’ll give you a four-word abstract: it drives people nuts. Obviously it’s hard to know how many Quebeckers are really annoyed or nauseated by the prime minister’s French, but if you judge by the newspapers, as Binghamton University French-language scholar Yulia Bosworth did in her article for the American Review of Canadian Studies<\/em>, it seems Trudeau is the equivalent of fingernails scraping a chalkboard forever.<\/p>\n

Hungry with curiosity, I got hold of Bosworth’s paper, entitled “The ‘Bad’ French of Justin Trudeau: When Language, Ideology, and Politics Collide.” As writing it suffers from the typical defects of published scholarship in the humanities: as the title suggests, it is one of those things in which every mental construct of any kind becomes an “ideology.” As scholarship it is pretty good: it contains a useful potted history of Quebecois linguistic self-hatred, and how “Quebec French” went from being a perennial object of shame to a rigid conscious standard, enforced with the same pride and viciousness as Parisian French within France.<\/p>\n

But as disguised comedy, the article can’t be beat. When Bosworth wants to give the flavour of her sample corpus of Quebec newspaper abuse of Trudeau, she has to clear her throat professorially first. “Titles, arguably, play an important role in constructing public images; they constitute visible and frequently consumed newspaper content and help construct a linguistic landscape.” Zzzz. But then you get to the good stuff, the distilled liquor:<\/p>\n